The Wages of Vulgarity

The brassy, bulb-nosed, toupeed trumpeter, seeming like a frayed hangover from the night before, began to sing and prance. Somehow, his grinding, gravel-voiced antics made the simple lyrics of When You're Smiling as suggestive as the spiel of a strip-show pitchman. Across the stage, his partner stirred, scratched herself, smothered a belch. Then she set the audience straight with knowing smirk: "He's beat out when he gets home." Was this a two-bit burlesque, or a seedy ginmill exhibition? Not at all. The crowd that almost fractured itself was at Las Vegas' glittering Sahara Hotel. And the performers were Old Pro Louis Prima, 46, and his frozen-faced wife Keely Smith, 27, whose doggedly vulgar act is one of the hottest things on the U.S. nightclub circuit.

Just a Jiggelo. While his bandsmen writhed on the stage last week, Prima jiggled a batch of oldies--Just a Gigolo, Sheik of Araby--salting them with off-color phrases and gyrations. His wife stood stiff, as if she smelled something slightly distasteful. When she finally moved into the act, Keely started with Don't Take Your Love from Me, singing it sweet and simple at first. Then, she, too, was all bumps and grinds, suggestive lilt and lyrics. Louis began to yowl around like a hopped-up tomcat. "She's been holding out on me," he squalled. Muttered Keely: "I'm too young for him." The crowd ate it up.

Prima's low estimate of nightclubbers' taste is equaled only by Las Vegas' high regard for his drawing power. Half a dozen clubs are bidding for his services. And the Sahara, which pays him $10,000 a week, goes all out to clean up while he is there. Waiters rush into the Casbar Lounge with extra tables, each the size of a phonograph record. By midnight, the space between lounge and gambling room piles up ten deep with waiting fans.

Garlic & Corn. Tough as it is to get in, nobody had a harder time breaking into the Sahara than Prima himself. A ham-and-egger for two decades, New Orleans-born Louis bounced around the clubs in the '30s, then flopped with his big band in the '40s. For a while, he hammered out garlicky dialogue records (Josephina, Please No Leena on da Bell) of little appeal. Finally in 1954, after he married smoky-voiced, baby-faced Keely, an Irish-Cherokee carpenter's daughter from Norfolk, the pair was hired for a two-week stand at the Sahara--and decided to play it loud and gritty. The act has been a smash ever since. Partial reason: Prima is that rare commodity, an entertainer whose bull bellow can be heard above the rattle and clank of the slot machines. After their first appearance there, Prima-Smith have played Vegas up to 40 weeks each year, are as solid a fixture as Sinatra or silver dollars.

Last week Prima and Smith were also dickering to do a couple of TV spectaculars (one of them a farce based on Pocahontas and John Smith), were keeping tab on their own recording company and their own music publishing firm. The dollars come tumbling down the chute, but never fast enough for Prima. Says he: "We have three record promoters, three pressagents, four secretaries, six men in the band. My take-home pay is no more than $2,000 a week. And people in restaurants expect me to leave $50 tips."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.